So I took a break to have a sandwich and suddenly it’s two and a half years later...*ahem*...sorry folks. But in my defence, I have been busy. Ok, that’s a crap excuse. I’ll flog myself later but first let me catch y’all up (I’m in one of those moods where I speak only in my “southern belle” accent, I would therefore appreciate it if you could, in your head, read this entry as if you were born and bred slightly west of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Damn, I’m starting to sound Welsh again, this always happens eventually).

So, quick update on what I have been doing between 10 December 2015 and today.

1. I did make a lot of sandwiches, that was no word of a lie.

2. I bought a house. Irish people are very into home ownership. I think it may surpass both the weather, and sliced pan as far as national fixations go. I may have gotten married and had children (yes, I know the order is wrong) but home ownership is like hardcore adulting. I am definitely a grown-up now...maybe I have to stop wearing the green crocs first, but I am very close to full-scale maturity.

I should say that ‘we’ bought a house. I could never buy a house on my own. Firstly, I couldn’t afford to buy anything more than a well-appointed garden shed on my single salary. Secondly, and equally important, I needed Mr Oh to do the actual house buying which appeared to be inordinately complicated and time-consuming (and mostly dull). Mr Oh had a long list of criteria that he was looking for in a home so it seemed logical that he would take the lead. He wanted four bedrooms, a moderately proportioned garden, an easy commute to work, local amenities etc. I just wanted a roof, walls, enough garden space to grow a small fairy village, and to sleep no more than 300 paces from the sea.

The only problem we had with the house buying plan other than budget, Mr Oh’s unreasonable and lengthy list of criteria, and the severe lack of housing stock in Ireland is the small issue of the fact that we were not actually in Ireland. We were in China, where the internet has to creep through a gazillion firewalls to eventually flop lazily into your computer and then wants to take a nap before you try to do anything else with it. Thankfully, houses are not bought over the internet on the basis of fastest fingers. Mr Oh spent months scouring the property sites looking for suitable homes. There wasn’t much out there. Occasionally, we found something we liked - sent out some obliging parental scouts to assess the properties - and, once, we got caught up in a bidding war by email which was great fun. It mostly consisted of me sitting in my pyjamas in Shanghai drinking wine and shouting “ten more grand” at Mr Oh, who thankfully had more sense than to treat the bidding process like a souped up episode of The Antiques Roadshow. It was a relief when, after a protracted process of submitting increasingly unjustifiable offers on this particular house, we were finally outbid (I must have run out of wine and gone to bed). Sometimes we drive by the house that we lost and I am hit by a (small) wave of guilt that the current owners and winners of the bidding battle, paid a lot more for their house than they would have if we had just gone out for dumplings that night.

Eventually, and just when I was starting to think we would never find the right house - we did. It has four bedrooms and a moderately sized garden. It is accessible by public transport. There is a fairy garden. And it is no more than 300 paces from the sea.

Yesterday Snugglepunk, who is now almost four and really living up to the ‘punk’ part of his name, used the horn of his toy rhino to gouge out several pieces of plaster from the landing wall. Where once I would have been consumed by fear for ‘the deposit’ and the almost certain loss of the deposit that seems to follow when one has small, destructive, selectively deaf children...on this occasion, because it’s our own house, I just shrugged, smiled benignly and threw the rhino out the window.

3. We left Shanghai and moved back to Ireland. A lot of things went into boxes. They then went on a ship and about six months later they came out of boxes. Mr Oh still thinks I own too much stuff but I have whittled down my possessions to such an extent that the only two items of frivolity that I insist on hauling around the world with me are a pair of small clay elephants and a ceramic pot filled with tiny flag-shaped badges from different countries. He will someday admit that, while we do seem to have a lot of stuff, most of it, while not exactly his, is used to house, clothe and maintain humans that he created. Minimalism is for people who don’t have children.

4. I went back to work. After four years of not working outside the home (and not really working that much inside it either because the ayi did that), this was a bit daunting. On my return I discovered that, in my absence, the entire office had been updated to a new version of Windows so I spent most of the first month trying to figure out how to attach files to emails and wistfully wondering if my children were thinking of me as they toddled around their creche. They weren’t.

5. I made a new person. It would be pretty uncool if I just announced his arrival into the world with fewer characters than I dedicated to describing the attempted suicide of our pet goldfish so I will postpone his formal introduction until the next entry.

So, there you have it. House - country - job - human - sandwiches. That stuff takes 2.5 years.

1. I know I swore I'd never write about anything pertaining to goldfish again but, as I'm discovering, goldfish are to young children what fixie bikes are to hipsters. 2. A flurry of white feathers just fluttered down outside my living room window. If I lived in a different country, I might investigate but as I live in China, I think it's best not to. Also, set to the background sound of the soprano practising her aria across the road in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music...the moment was quite dramatic, and weird.

So, last week I received an email from Little A's school informing me of the upcoming school trip and inviting me to attend. As is normal with Little A's school, the information provided was minimal. They would be going somewhere with "rollercoasters, water-rafting, gold-fishing and vegetable-picking". The thought of a clutch of 3-year-olds on rollercoasters and rafts in China (the 'in China' bit is important) set my A-dar blasting. (A-dar is the implant in my head that senses when Little A should not be doing something).

The school, while encouraging parents to go, weren't too happy about me bringing Snugglepunk along as well. They suggested I leave him at home (strapped into his highchair for the day with a supply of rice crackers perhaps?) and told me that it was too dangerous for a 1 year old (but not apparently for 3 year olds who are famous for being significantly more mature and world-wise than 1 year olds). It's not that I particularly fancied the idea of juggling two small children for the day, one of whom likes eating rubbish and the other who likes picking sticks off the ground and swishing them around in the faces of other young children while shouting 'I'm a pirate, ARGGGHHH...me hearties". But, I didn't want Little A to miss out on whatever it was that was happening and I certainly was not going to let him go under the supervision of the school which is well-meaning but generally chaotic and disorganised.

So, yesterday Little A, Snugglepunk and I set off on the school trip with two bags, one pram, two slings, two packets of baby wipes and about 300 rice cakes. It is impossible to have too many rice cakes.

Little A goes to an "international" school but it seems to be 90% Chinese. It's also supposed to be bilingual but I think it's bilingual in the way that all the Chinese kids speak Chinese and all the English speaking kids speak English and I don't sense a whole load of crossover. Little A never speaks Chinese in front of me so I’m never too clear how much he actually speaks and understands…more than me probably.

We took a tour bus an hour north of Shanghai which wasn't actually an hour north of Shanghai at all because it was still Shanghai...so perhaps better to say an hour north of my Shanghai. I had very little idea of what kind of place we were visiting, so at least my expectations were low. I had been on enough school trips with Little A to know that we needed to pack a lot of food. The school provided Little A with a "packed lunch" consisting rather randomly of two bottles of water, a banana, four mini "croissants" (i.e. bread rolls shaped like croissants) and two bread rolls shaped like bread rolls. I seem to use an inordinate amount of "quotation marks" when writing about China - maybe because things are often claimed to be things that we later find out are not the things they claim to be at all - if you get me. Little A and Snugglepunk had polished off the bread roll extravaganza before we even arrived so it's just as well I had also packed three tupperware boxes of sausage pasta, apples, juice and the 300 rice cakes. Small boys are hungry - I know this from experience.

We arrived at what seemed to be some kind of park. It was immediately clear that it was a very Chinese destination i.e. it was packed full of people and the bins were overflowing at 10am. The first mass activity of the day was a trip to the toilet (this is, after all, a class full of 3 year olds). The toilet was a ceramic trench with small dividers along the wall. There was no flushing, no water, no doors, no toilet paper. I've spent time in China so I was vaguely ok with this and knew that it was best not to dwell on it, not to breathe and not to touch anything. I'm seasoned at the way of the squat trench. Little A however was having none of it and refused to step near the trench. "I don't want to fall in", he said wisely and went outside to find a less offensive tree upon which to relieve himself. I made a mental note not to drink water again for the rest of the day.

The whole thing was a bit mental. There was a lady with a microphone and whistle whose job appeared to be to corral us like cattle. She also had a faded red flag raised high in the air that we were supposed to follow through the crowds of people and children all in their own groups, with their own red flags that looked entirely identical to our red flag. Every time we weren't doing what we should, she would start piping on her whistle and rabbiting down the microphone in Chinese. She was Captain Von Trapp in the squat body of a middle-aged Chinese tour guide, with a voice like a round-saw cutting metal.

The first "activity" (I'm starting to think I should just put quotation marks around the whole entry), was the "playground" which was, in fact a dated and decrepit amusement park. We had a jolly little ride on a squeaky train before Little A spotted a large swinging pirate ship and demanded that we go on it. I looked at the swarming mass of Chinese tweens pushing and clambering to get on the ride, which looked a bit rusty and didn't appear to have restraints and tried to jolly him off in the other direction. The only other rides were a spinning one with water guns and bumper cars. Little A took one look at the cars and said "I wanna drive car!". I thought "Well, that's not possible, he's only 3...surely he wouldn't be allowed on the bumper cars" but, you know, it's China so I don't know why I thought that, of course 3 year olds can go on the bumper cars! In fact, it turns out that 1 year olds are also allowed on them but some maternal instinct at the back of my spine must have kicked in because I decided that Snugglepunk was a tad too young to be bashed around in an electrified vehicle. My Chinese friend Kitty offered to take Aodhan on the bumper cars. While he was at first delighted, his joy turned to horror as he realised that the cars were crashing into each other and he started to get panicked. Kitty, however, managed to drive around the little bumper car arena in smooth circles avoiding all other cars and people while Little A sat frozen in terror beside her.

Thankfully, activity 1 was now over. Activity 2 was a "boat" ride. The "boat" was a series of bamboo poles tied together with benches strapped on top. The "life jackets" were pieces of orange material stuffed with something that may or may not have been buoyant. Apparently they also have no problem with one year olds on floating bamboo rafts although they had neither child nor infant versions of the possibly-though-not-necessarily-buoyant "life-jackets". Not wanting to be the neurotic foreigner who wouldn't participate, I gingerly stepped onto the raft clutching my two children, and chose a bench towards the back. Just after I got on, about 6 other families pushed their way onto our raft, including one that wedged themselves onto our bench. The gondolier-man shouted "too heavy!" so two more men jumped on. He shouted "too heavy!" again. I was about to volunteer to get off as the raft started listing precariously to one side and then, Tour Guide Von Trapp herself hopped on, shouted at the man with the pole and off we lurched into the middle of a lake of unknown depth. I looked down at the bamboo poles that separated us from the water and saw that they were now submerged and water was starting to pool around my shoes. If I had a picture of my face at that moment, I am entirely sure it would have been ashen. It's not that I can't swim, I can swim just fine, but the two little boys can't swim and didn't have life jackets, and the raft was slightly submerged with one side rising up out of the water. I was the only person concerned, apparently, as everyone else was chattering away and Tour Guide Von Trapp blew down on her whistle in a moment of, what seemed from my panic station at the back, to be exuberance and joy. Snugglepunk started to squeal and try to wriggle out of my arms. I forced a smile and looked down at Little A beside me. With my best jolly voice I said, "Isn't this fun? A boat!". He looked up weakly and said, "I want to get off". I nodded, gripped his hand and started trying to remember what I had learned in those two lifesaving classes I did when I was 14. Thankfully, it was a short boat ride.

Swiftly moving on to Activity 3...fishing. Sorry, "fishing". Fishing consisted of a series of large plastic tubs filled with water and terrified goldfish around which dozens of crazed children with nets were wedged, frantically trying to, ehm, fish. When a fish was caught, it was squeezed into a container of some kind, usually a waterbottle the diameter of which was less than the diameter of the fish itself. Sometimes they didn't bother adding water - it was grim. For proof - see picture below. I'm not big into animal welfare but even I was slightly horrified. Even so, I gave Little A a net, squashed him in between some older kids and let him loose, knowing that the freaked out fish were all huddled together in the centre of the tub, beyond the reach of his little arms. He caught nothing. Eventually, Tour Guide Von Trapp got on the whistle again and we all assembled under her frayed red flag. Little A looked around...all the other children had goldfish. He looked at me plaintively, "Where's my fish?", he wailed. And in a very Augustus Gloop fashion, he threw a net at me, pointed to the tubs and screamed "GET ME A FISH. NOW!". My little tyrant - so cute.

Normally, I would deal with this like a good parent, gently talk to him about his tone and help him deal with and understand his emotions. But I had been in that godforsaken park for 3 hours, I was sweating, Snugglepunk was screeching for food, i had at least 7 mosquito bites and all my good-parent-motivation was drowned in the lake. I picked up the net and took myself over to the fish tub. After a minute of failed fishing, I gave up. The net was too small, the children were pushing me and the fish were wiley. Unable to face the prospect of Little A's inevitable meltdown and the ensuing chaos, I looked desperately around for a solution. Kitty pointed to a man with a barrell. I gave the man 20 kuai (€3) and he gave me a little fish box with a handle and there were 7 little fish inside! A failure for parenting, perhaps, but a triumphant win for my afternoon sanity. Predictably, Little A was bored of carrying the fish approximately 3 minutes later so I was left to juggle baby in sling, fish in hand, buggy in other hand and small child trailing behind me whining that he wanted to go home.

Activity 4 was "peanut picking". Despite the fact that I had three Epi-pens in my bag, I did not feel like bringing my nut-allergic baby "peanut picking", quotations marks or not. Instead I spent 45 minutes milling around the rubbish strewn entrance, waiting for the group to finish the final activity and watching my children lick the railings.

Eventually it was over and we were back on the bus. Some parents had to take another bathroom break before we got back on the bus. It had been 4 hours since we had last been to the bathroom but I was holding it in. Kitty came back looking shell-shocked. She didn't want to speak about it. And she's Chinese - that's saying something.

On the bus, Little A turned to me and said. “I had a great time”. Confused I asked, “Did you like the bumper cars?”. “No.”, he said, “They were dangerous”. “Ok, did you like the boat?”, I asked. “No”, he said, “That was dangerous”.

“So, what did you like?”, I asked again. “Mummy came”, he said, before falling asleep against the window. Sniff.

So now we have our four fish, plus the seven from the school trip, two of whom are already dead. Current fish count: 9.

I'm just going to get the bad news out of the way at the beginning...Orange and Other Orange are dead. They were as happy as two fish in a giant blue-lit filtered tank when we left for the summer. Mr Oh also did a stellar job at remembering to feed them occasionally when he was in Shanghai on his own. When he was due to join us in Ireland, he brought the fish into his office where they died. I don't blame them. Offices are no place for fish (or people really). Whenever I used to go into the office every day, sometimes I felt a bit green around the gills too. I didn't die though...I just had a string of children, moved to Shanghai and refused to go back. If only that option were available to pet goldfish.

Orange died first. I didn't ask how but I know that he made at least one attempt at fish suicide before his eventual demise. Other Orange did make it back to us at the end of the summer, but he didn't look great and it was clear that his time on earth was limited. Little A was delighted to be reunited with Other Orange and did ask me a few times where Orange was (actually he calls all fish that are not the one he is looking at at that particular moment 'Other Orange'). I dealt with this skillfully by looking at the ceiling and saying something reassuring like "Oh, you know...here and there..".

Then one morning, Other Orange was gone too. Mr Oh got up early and disposed of his body. That morning, Little A stood on his small giraffe stool, staring into the empty bowl from a variety of angles, as if Other Orange might be wedged under a pebble. "Where has Orange gone?", he asked (still flexible with the goldfish names). I took an executive decision that this would be a good time to discuss death with the 3-year-old. I think the clearer and more forthright we are about these issues the better. I looked Little A in the eye and I said, "Other Orange died". Little A looked at me for a long time with what I recognised as his thinking-hard-face (eyebrows scrunched, mouth slightly open, head cocked slightly to one side). I stood panicked in front of him - a million thoughts and regrets running through my head. Do we discuss heaven? Should I tell him that Daddy threw Orange in the black bin out the back? What if he cries? What if I cry? What have I done? Can I run away now? etc etc.

Little A looked at me and said "Where did Orange dive to?". A big wave of relief washed over me. The universe was giving me a life raft and I was going to take it. "Ehm...the ocean", I said with my best knowledgable look (which is not be confused with my making-it-up-as-I-go-along-look, to which it bears a startling similarity). "Like Nemo?", Little A asked. "Yes", I responded, "Just like Nemo."

"Oh", Little A said, apparently satisfied. "Orange has gone to play with Nemo and Nemo's Daddy in the ocean". I nodded persuasively.

"I want to buy a new fish", Little A announced. I was still nodding.

That afternoon, I set off across Shanghai with Snugglepunk, Little A and Ayi on a fish buying expedition. I had to buy more fish before Little A starting poking holes in my ocean diving story. The place one buys goldfish in this part of Shanghai is the Flower, Bird, Fish and Cockroach market. I don't think that's its official name, but it should be. It's an airless, windowless maze of tiny ramshackle stalls heaving with various things that move and swim and squelch and slither. The floor is slimey and it's best not to look down generally. Also best not to wear flip-flops but I'll know that for next time. With Snugglepunk on my hip and clutching Little A's hand in a vice-like grip to stop him running off to pet an iguana, we inched our way along the narrow alleys - Ayi leading the way, Little A trying to break free from me and me trying not to think about what just touched my foot. Snugglepunk was sitting happily aloft having a good look around and saying 'F-f-f-f' every time he saw a fish, which was every half a second.

Once we located goldfish corner, Ayi turned to me and said "No talking". I nodded and whispered "get 4 fish". Ayi then commenced to shout and point while I pleaded with Little A not to touch anything, not the floor, not the insects, not the slime covered fish tanks, not the birds, nothing. All I wanted was to get out of there with a few fish and no microbes of mutated tropical disease clinging to my children. We came home with 8 fish, 3 kg of gravel and big, pink plastic plant. I'm still not sure about the microbes.

We didn’t really get very imaginative with the fish naming. One was called Orange, one called Little Orange, then there was Other Orange 1, Other Orange 2, Other Orange 3, Black Fish (who was not orange) and Burt Reynolds.

The fish have not fared terribly well. One jumped out the first night. I found his lifeless fish-corpse lying on the floor in front of the tank. Mr Oh disposed of the body. Another was found floating in the top of the tank several days later. Mr Oh is a very good sport about his unsolicited role as fish undertaker. Things seemed ok for a few weeks and then I noticed that the fish all seemed to be infected with some kind of fungus that causes their fins to rot and open sores to appear on their body. I bought fish medicine but, alas, no amount of modern medicine could help those poor fish. One more died last night and Mr Oh bludgeoned another to death this morning to put him out of his misery. We're down to four fish and one of them has an ulcer on his head so I imagine he's next. It's become a real problem because although Little A's counting skills are rudimentary (he just counts the fish every time he sees them so at one point he thought there were 23 fish in the tank which, incidentally, is as high as he can count), even he will notice when we're down to three fish.

I need to source disease-free fish in China. I think online might be the answer. I am certainly not going back to the cusp of creepy-crawlie hell that is the slime market. I might try Taobao. I didn't think live fish was the kind of thing you would be able to buy online and have delivered but then I remembered that this is China...everything can be bought online and delivered. Even a live fox (see below, poor fox looks none too happy about finding itself in the online Chinese marketplace).

I should really just abandon my dreams of having a fish-filled house and just stop buying fish but the boys love them...and i have the stupid tank now. I promise I'm going to stop writing about goldfish soon.

And...we're back! We've all returned to Shanghai - Little A has returned to school - I've returned to checking the air quality every hour, retching on the street (the sound of spitting does it to me) and screaming "Don't touch that!" at least five times an hour. Summer is officially over!

When I first arrived here, I heard about the total mass exodus of expats from Shanghai during the summer. If you're foreign, have children and are able to - you leave - for months if you can. It all sounds a bit decadent at first but after I did Summer 2014 in Shanghai, I swore never again. It's 40 degrees, 100% humidity, the pollution sticks to the sweat in your hair, there are still no parks, the schools are closed, everyone is gone. In summer, the Chinese to French person ratio in my neighborhood skyrockets and the sock-less Vespa riders disappear from the roads. So, this year, we left too.

The prospect of two months of clean air made me happy to unprecedented proportions. So much so that I was willing to do that journey again - you know the day-time one that I do on my own with the two boys that lasts 13 hours and then the Heathrow transfer and then another hour long flight? Yeah, that one. Mr Oh looked a bit terrified for me as he waved goodbye to us at the airport. He was following us a month later. No, I didn't feel sorry for him. He had a month of partying, fabulous dinners, lie-ins and lazy weekends to look forward to. I had a month of laundry, and solo-parenting ahead of me, plus that awful journey. In reality, he appeared to do rather little partying and spent his weekends sitting forlornly on the sofa playing his guitar into the middle-distance.

And the journey was fine. Once you accept that you will spent 13 hours being bitten and crawled upon by a 10 month old, wrangling three people into a dirty plane toilet at regular intervals, bribing an almost 3 year old with snacks and endless TV and trying to stifle the sobs of boredom and frustration that are welling up inside you like a tidal wave of volcanic emotion. Once you make your peace with that - it’s totally doable. It also makes you feel like a superhero (only when it's over though, during the actual journey you will feel like a human dishcloth - damp with sweat, fear, breastmilk and the various bodily fluids of your small children).

If anyone would like further information on flying solo with young kids, please see my earlier post here.

We had an amazing two months in Dublin, London and the south of France. Snugglepunk crawled on grass for the first time ever. Little A dug potatoes out of the garden and learned that not all dirt contains nuclear waste. We went for walks, ran over sand dunes, swam in the sea (France), paddled in the sea until our feet got headaches (Ireland), climbed walls, visited castles and playgrounds, ate food that was high-quality and healthy (Percy Pigs are made from real fruit juice) and did all the things that we can't do in China. We saw some friends - not as many as we would have liked but Snugglepunk isn't a fan of the car, much like his brother before him (see previous post on baby car-travel trauma).

I even became a Godmother for the first time (Hiya Baby T!) which was amazing. Our boys don't have a lot of experience in churches (they are, however, incredibly well behaved in Buddhist temples). After Baby T's christening, Little A ran up to me, pointed at the altar and said "I want to go up there and sing Let It Go". I said "Let's go light some candles for your great-grandmothers instead who are, at this moment, turning in their graves". Little A said "Ok, that sounds fun." He lit six candles and promptly blew them all out. I had to hold my hand over his mouth as he started to sing Happy Birthday to the lady statue. I looked over at Little A's own Godmother and sighed...she's got her work cut out for her.

Mr Oh joined us in London and we all spend the next 3 weeks jetting around Europe consuming our body weight in ice-cream and raw meat. We were able to travel back together to China although I noted that Mr Oh brought his book with him on the plane which I thought was hilarious.

So 7 weeks later, here we are. Back again. On return, we spent 7 full days tortured by jet-lag and children who tag-teamed night time waking so that I never got any sleep. Just when I thought they’d fetch a good price on Taobao, they all started sleeping again and I got bronchitis. Ah China bronchitis...it's good to be home.

Footnote: The title photo appears courtesy of the London Massive (i.e. my bro and sister-in-law). It’s not really courtesy of them because I haven’t asked them if I can use it yet. In fact, I only realized they probably took the photo when I noticed that it appeared strangely unwarped - which is unheard of in any panoramic iPhone shot that either me or Mr Oh have attempted. Our panoramas look like a bad dream. The London Massive, however, know how to work their iPhones - this is how we know it was them.

The photo itself was taken at Uisneach, the sacred and mythological centre of Ireland. We spent a morning on this hill looking at bulls and sacrificing our hangovers to the ancient gods of Ireland. (The hangovers were courtesy of my cousin Jude and her new husband Trevor who had the most amazing wedding in a field…as you do).

They're alive! Orange and Other Orange have prevailed. They lived to see another day...and then another after that. It didn't look good for them at first - they did not come into our lives in a vestibule conducive to survival. They most likely originated from a location of unsanitary, diseased and morally vacant characteristics. I hope, at least, that our home was a step up in this regard (small children are not exactly famed for their hygiene and compassion however) . The tupperware was roomy, if sparse. The locals, i.e. Little A and Snugglepunk, enthusiastic and noisy but not, it turns out, murderous.

I will confess, it nearly ended badly...for Orange anyway. They were detained uneventfully for about 48 hours in the tupperware before the fish bowl and pretty green gravel arrived. After a few minutes in their new home, I came to the conclusion that the fish bowl was totally inadequate. Ayi did not agree, she has less interest in the comfort and spacial requirements of goldfish. Mr Oh concurred with my assessment that they needed roomier digs - he has a vested interest in the survival of the goldfish. He has no interest in explaining to Little A about pet-death...he's still a bit perturbed about Little A's extensive exposure to moth genocide.

This led to another prolonged online search in Chinese for fish accommodation, hampered by the fact that the Chinese for fish bowl is annoyingly not 'fish' + 'bowl'. Searches for "fish+bowl" (yuwan) resulted in many options, if I were in the market for a ceramic bowl with a fish painted on it. I was not - we already have six bowls with fish painted on them. Unsurprisingly (because he's essentially Chinese), Little A calls these items 'fish bowls' as well. It look a while to work out that the Chinese for fish bowl is "fish+vat" (yugang). [鱼缸 for anyone who finds themselves in a similar predicament.]

So, in the interests of keeping the fish alive, I invested in a “fish vat package with landscaping”. As is often the case when I order things online in Chinese, I am never quite sure what's going to turn up. What arrived was a medium sized aquarium complete with lighting system, internal filter and pump, live plants that arrived chilled in soil and skillfully suspended in a styrofoam box by toothpicks (a set-up that's hard to convey in words so I'll just stop now rather than spend the next three paragraphs describing the plant delivery method), three types of gravel, a piece of Japanese driftwood that I had to boil first, as well as enough food, apparatus and environmental stabilizers to set up an Irish national aquarium in Shanghai. I was mildly surprised it didn't come with fish.

It look me twenty minutes just to fill the thing with water. I really should have decided where I wanted it to be located before I filled it with water, plants, gravel and driftwood. Another hour and a half later it was both filled with water AND where it should be. The floor was pretty wet and Snugglepunk had to be sanitized.

Orange and Other Orange, who seemed pretty happy in their rather traditional-looking fish bowl, were a bit resistant to the move but I caught them with my fish net and they didn't really have much say in the matter. The Shanghai branch of the Irish National Aquarium was open for business and I was very pleased with how everything worked out.

About three hours after the official launch, I was walking past and took a quick glance into the tank. I saw Other Orange but didn't immediately see Orange. I stepped a bit closer, thinking he might be behind a plant or under the driftwood, but there was no sign. Just to get a better look, I got really close and peered over the top of the tank down into the water to see if I could locate Orange. I heard a faint smacking sound and, in horror, I realised what had happened.

Screaming "Help me, somebody help me" in a totally hysterical and melodramatic fashion (as is my way), I frantically pulled the writing desk, upon which the tank stood, back from the wall. I now must apologise to my friend, Jill, who up until then had been sipping tea in my living room and, at that moment, possibly thought that I'd lost an arm rather than just a fish judging from the way she leapt off the sofa.

As the desk was pulled back, Orange came into view, wriggling and dusty on the floor with fear blazing in his eyes. Ever calm and cool-headed in emergency situations, I continued to shriek and wail loudly while scooping Orange off the floor in the net and flopping him back into the tank where he retreated to a corner, pulled all his fins in and sat stonily, looking deeply traumatised and still draped in cobweb. Jill was not optimisitc. "I don't think he's going to make it", she said. I gave her a withering look but did concede that it was probably the fish equivalent of jumping out of an eternity pool on the 83rd floor of a luxury hotel onto the pavement.

I then did what any decent, fish-loving person would do after such a trauma...I put a magazine over the top of the tank and went out to lunch. When I came back, Orange was still alive. He even looked a bit more chipper although he was still draped in strands of cobweb - lest we forget.

The next morning, I took the magazine off and brought the water level down by another two inches. I fed the fish, spoke to them and had a peek into the tank every 20 minutes or so to check that Orange hadn't had another go. By the end of the day, I felt confident enough to step down the suicide watch. By the following morning, Orange had managed to lose his trail of cobwebs and was back to looking relatively healthy and content.

It was Children's Day in China yesterday. I'm always suspicious of these types of 'festivals'. It usually means Little A will come home from school with some kind of unusual gift. I was not wrong. Yesterday, when I picked him up, I was presented with a bag of decorative face clothes and two goldfish. I don't think the two were connected. I preferred it when they gave us insect repellant.

The fish were housed in a small, lidless jar - pretty cramped and precarious living conditions, even by goldfish standards, which I imagine is a low bar anyway. The problem of how to get them home seemed to be the first of many fish-related hurdles I was going to have to face that day. Unless, of course, I fell at the first hurdle after which there would be no further hurdles…apart from the explain-to-the-almost-3-year-old-about-death-hurdle. Yikes.

Given that I was in charge of carrying Snugglepunk on my back and pushing Little A in the pram...the welfare of the fish was left in the shaky and whimsical hands of a fickle pre-schooler with a penchant for pouring water out of things. It was a slow journey home, punctuated by cries of "I wanna kiss the fish" and "Ooops".

The pavements of Shanghai are no place for goldfish. There are whizzing motorcycles, loose paving stones and unexpected slanty parts - not to mention a large wide-eyed child threatening to drink your environment. At one point, Little A buckling under the tedium of responsibility, quietly reached his arm out over the side of the pram, lowering the jar towards the pavement where he presumably planned to abandon it without fanfare or ado somewhere between the Bank of China and the KFC. Thankfully, I was alerted to his plan by the fact that he had not threatened to pet the fish in several seconds and was able to whisk the jar out of his hand just before contact with the ground was made.

Little A, unmoved by my daring rescue, looked up lazily and said "Mama, you hold fish" as he spent the rest of the journey home lounging in the pram with his hands behind his head outlining the various things he expected me to procure for him that afternoon..."Ice-cream, two cakes, some Peppa Pig, a bicycle, three hugs and wine".

I spent the rest of the journey pretending I was a contestant in The Crystal Maze - holding open-water fish in one hand, pushing a pram with the other while a 10kg creature with teeth alternates bouncing, squealing and biting on my back and the 18 kg creature in the pram uses his feet against the wheels to cause the pram to veer sharply in one direction and then the other. The air was humid. My hair was in my eyes and I was running low on affection for both child and fish.

On arrival at home, Snugglepunk scampered off under a table in search of dropped crumbs of Play-Doh to lick off the floor. Little A headed off into the kitchen in search of wine. I should perhaps note at this stage that we have convinced Little A that prune juice is wine and he has become quite the connoisseur with the added advantage of regular bowel movements. I'm sure that this is atrocious parenting but I'm not sorry....although I do wish he would stop demanding wine from people in restaurants and shops. I think they just assume we’re French.

Anyway, I found myself standing alone in the living room holding a jar of goldfish and with no notion what I was supposed to do with them or how I was supposed to feed them. I filled a tupperware container (the one I usually use for Corn Flakes, but will probably no longer use for Corn Flakes) with water and slotted the fish and their temporary hostel into the bookshelf. I'd like to think it's out of Little A's reach but that would underestimate his ability to pile stools on top of each other and climb on top of them. I have yet to find anywhere in the apartment that is actually out of his reach.

I spent the next hour frantically trying to buy fish food and a fish bowl online while dinner went uncooked and children went untended to. By the time the bowl and food get here, the fish - who Little A has named "Orange" and "Other Orange" - will probably be dead and I will have an unwanted fish bowl on my hands. Maybe I can use it to store Corn Flakes?

On waking this morning, I went to check on Orange and Other Orange. They're still alive, surprisingly. Little A spent five minutes tapping on the side of their tupperware and shouting "Hello fishies" at them before he left for school so I doubt they're long for this world.

My soul is a cultural wasteland. I don't read books that were written more than five years ago. I hate the theatre (one-man plays, in particular, make me want to claw at my brain). I don't see the point in concerts - if I want to listen to Chopin, I'll do it from my kitchen while drinking wine and eating leftover Shepherd's Pie. To Mr Oh's dismay, I don't even like gigs, unless there are seats, and wine. I'm not fond of museums or galleries (no seats, no wine). I quite like old churches (seats and sometimes wine), but that's about the limit of things I'll traipse out to look at. My cultural aversion is such that I may be the only person to visit Beijing and not bother going to the Great Wall. We did go to Tiananmen Square - big square, not much to see. And we stood outside the Forbidden Palace (I took a wild guess that seats and wine were not among the forbidden enjoyments inside).In Shanghai, there isn't much to see by way of culture anyway. The city itself is the attraction - the people, the alleyways, the buildings, the street food, the smells...ok, maybe not the smells...but the rest of it is pretty great. Mr Oh is a bit more into seeing 'stuff' than I am and a few weeks ago, in a rare show of spousal compliance, I agreed to accompany him to the Shanghai Museum to look at stuff. There were a lot of vases. And people looking at vases. It did not change my opinion on museums, or vases. But, there is one museum that I have been waiting a long time to visit - the newly opened Shanghai Natural History Museum. If there is one thing that will make me leave the house with two children before 8am on a weekday, it's a building full of dinosaur bones and stuffed monkeys. There aren't many things happening in Shanghai that appeal to an almost 3-year-old boy - so tales of long queues and massive crowds be damned - we were going to the Natural History Museum whether it was any good or not. In my experience of Chinese museums, the verdict tends to fall more heavily on the 'not' side of things. China has a particular skill when it comes to tourism fail. I once visited a limestone cave somewhere in Jiangsu Province to find that it was covered in pink neon strip lighting. Places of interest are rammed with gabbling tour groups, the members of which are so busy documenting their experience that they forgot to have the experience in the first place. If you don't have a video of it, it didn't happen. Chinese tourists also seem to be of the view that if there aren't another 15,000 people doing the same thing as you, at the same time, it's probably not worth doing, or videoing. We tend to avoid anything touristy in China - partly because it's always aiming for, but never quite being, any good. And partly because Little A and Snugglepunk usually become the attraction, and without swift intervention, get swallowed by a sea of people, documenting them, touching their heads and trying to pose for photos with them. Only yesterday, a woman in a park got quite angry with me because I refused to let her hold Snugglepunk, as if he were some kind of communal baby I was failing to share with her. And the day previously, as Mr Oh and Little A were crossing the road, a man crossing in the opposite direction reached down and touched Little A's face as he walked past, like rubbing a good luck charm. He's lucky Little A didn't bite him. He's lucky I didn't bite him. He's particularly lucky that Mr Oh didn't notice it happening. I'm going to have to consider hanging a sign around their necks...No Touching or Feeding The Foreign Babies. Anyway, we were willing to brave the early morning start, the unwanted attention, the queues, the crowds, the public toilets, the likelihood that it would be terrible - all in the name of culture, stuffed monkeys and Little A's love of dinosaurs. We got there half an hour after it opened. The queue was long, snaking back and forth in front of the building (which was pretty swish and fancy). Now if there's one thing the Chinese do not like doing, it is forming an orderly queue. Everyone's a queue hopper and we had only been in the queue for a few seconds before people started pushing past us towards the front. I stuck out my elbows and gave one pushy granny a good dig in the ribs. Undeterred, she plowed on past me and I was, at that moment, unwilling to take her down with a full force body slam. She was probably 90 so I would have had an unfair advantage. But the next guy wasn't getting away so easily. I put my arm out as he tried to sidle past me and in my best angry Chinese said 'Nuh-uh Mister, get to the back of the queue'. He was apologetic (I hate it when they do that, it ruins my flow) and was like 'I'm terribly sorry but I have to get there" pointing to some people ahead of me. I was still a bit suspicious and questioned him 'You got some pengyous in the queue ahead'. He nodded furiously "Yes, my wife and son". Wife and son were waving at me at this stage. Darn - I thought - as I waved him past - I'm too soft for this. Just as I was pumping myself up with an internal pep talk on the importance on being firm with the queue dodgers, a fight broke out behind me. One old lady was pushing another one into the railings and kicking her feet as she tried to sneak down the line. I was quite relieved. I'm not cut out for assaulting the elderly. The queue moved surprisingly fast and we were through the front doors in no time. There was a totally ineffectual and token security check as is customary wherever groups of people gather in China. There's a lot of waving around of metal detectors and patting down of bags without any real purpose. It's always unclear to me what they are looking for...semi-automatic machine guns perhaps. You'd probably root those out in a bag pat. The new Natural History Museum is a pretty impressive building. It's all glass and shiny and no one is spitting on the floor. There's English everywhere and big sign saying "Extrance" (seriously, you spend millions on a state of the art fully bilingual museum, with totally perfect English at all the exhibits, and a big Extrance sign over the door....sigh). After that though, it was actually very good. I mean, it was totally mobbed naturally but it was really impressive. There were realistic life size dinosaur models that moved and roared so Little A spent much of the visit screaming and wailing 'I wanna go home' and 'Don't let the dinosaur eat me!'. There was one random floor where a sad little canteen sold illuminous mystery meat on a stick and viscous liquids of indeterminate composition which reminded me that I was still in China, but other than that, it was a top class international offering. So often when reading reviews of hotels or attractions on TripAdvisor, you see phrases like 'It was pretty good, by Chinese standards' or 'The zoo wasn't totally depressing...there was a nice bench and one of the penguins seemed relatively healthy'. So, it's nice to see somewhere that really is good. Not just China good - but actually good. Yeah there were still masses of people walking around with their smartphones stuck in front of their faces videoing the whole thing and there was one particularly boring exhibit on the native wildlife of the Shanghai area (presumably before the only wildlife were rats and over-dressed poodles) which had the familiar dated and slightly faded feel of other Chinese museums (it was strangely comforting)...but there were all kinds of animals and dinosaurs and loads of bones and enough stuffed monkeys to make a taxidermist cry. I was exhausted. Mr Oh was delighted. Little A was traumatised. Snugglepunk was fairly unfazed. We would totally go again. Early.

I have spent quite a lot of time on this blog outlining the weird and wonderful things that Ayi does. On the weird side of things we have the daily afternoon showers and the high volume, wordless, tuneless singing she does when she wants to calm Snugglepunk down. I often think she's just trying to drown out the sound of his crying with her own, similarly screechy, noises. On the wonderful side of things we have ironing.

It has occurred to me recently, however, that craziness is a two way street. Ayi thinks that most foreigners are a bit odd but she thinks I - in particular - am as mad as a box of frogs. Sometimes in my normal day to day existence I catch Ayi looking as me as if to say, what the hell kind of weird shit are you up to now? Examples include:

1. Cold Water. Chinese people drink their water warm or hot. They do not drink cold water because they 'know' that it is bad for your health. It probably stems from boiling drinking water first to get rid of germs but somewhere along the line and the message just comes out as 'COLD WATER BAD', particularly for women, and even more particularly for pregnant woman. During the summer, I'd be standing in the kitchen in the 36 degree heat chugging down a pre-chilled bottle of ice water and Ayi would shake her head at me. "Baby cold", she would say and walk out of the room as if the sight of me drinking cold water offended her sensibilities. She wasn't the only one though, I was thrice refused cold water in restaurants by wait staff who were concerned for the health of my unborn child. If I had been sitting there downing shots of vodka and smoking Double Happiness cigarettes they would have been less horrified.

2. Bread. Ayi does not understand bread. What's to understand? She isn't against it, she says, she just couldn't eat it every week. She's also a little bit confused by sandwiches. The Chinese for sandwich is San-ming-zhi and, as 'San' means three in Chinese, they naturally assume that a San-ming-zhi would have three slices of bread. Ayi thinks I'm doing it wrong.

3. Breastfeeding. Now I don't think the Irish are in any position to be taking the moral high-ground on breastfeeding as we shamefully have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. But, in China, breastfeeding is solely for very young babies (maybe only in the first few weeks, if at all) and peasants (they have a lot of peasants which is why their breastfeeding rates are quite good). The day Ayi turned up to be interviewed a year and half ago, I was breastfeeding a feverish, naked 14 month old. Ayi was genuinely confused as to why I might be doing this given the fact that I could presumably afford both clothes and formula. I've also realised why Chinese babies are fat. Every time Snugglepunk cries, Ayi hands him to me and says "Hungry" even if I fed him five minutes ago. If he was bottlefed, she'd have him on at least 15 bottles a day. I don't have the heart to tell her that he's not always hungry, he just doesn't like her singing.

4. Pollution. It took me a long time to convince Ayi that the air was polluted. When it's windy and the leaves blow up in the air. That's pollution in Ayi's head. It took me months to convince her that if the air was polluted outside that she couldn't take little A down the lobby to play. Our conversations would go something like this: - Me: The pollution is really bad today, why are you in the lobby. - Ayi: Pollution outside. We play inside. - Me: But the lobby door is wide open and the air from outside is coming inside. - Ayi: *blinking* - Me: ...so the pollution is also coming inside... - Ayi: I close door. - Me: *sigh*. At first, Ayi thought this whole pollution thing was just another crazy laowai (foreigner) obsession like wine and seatbelts, but as the pollution situation worsens the Chinese media has started to admit that on really bad days it's not just 'very cloudy'. Ayi has started to think that maybe pollution is something worth worrying about. Every day I tell her the Air Quality reading and, if it's high, she likes to ring her husband and shout at him about the pollution - insisting that he keep their young granddaughter indoors. No doubt he now thinks she's crazy.

5. The Sun. If you see loads of umbrella's popping up around Shanghai, it's either raining or it's not raining at all. Chinese people (especially women) fear the sun in the same way that I fear tigers. They don't want to tan because then they look like peasants (there's an overarching theme here of being seen to be peasanty). There is an old Chinese story about Yi The Archer shooting down the 9 hot suns in the sky and only leaving one. I think if Ayi met Yi The Archer she would beat him over the head with his own bow for leaving the last one up there. She told me last summer that, when picking Little A up from kindergarten, she would take a taxi home on rainy days (fair enough) and also on sunny days (huh?). She told me that the sun is bad for children and adults alike and neither her nor Little A should be exposed to it. You'd think I was asking her to drag him home through a haze of toxic gas (oh wait...).

4. Babywearing. Despite the fact that the Mei-Tai form of wrap is a traditional Chinese carrier, Chinese people do not carry their babies in slings, at least not in the cities (again...peasanty). Ayi tells me it's bad for his back, he should be lying down flat. While she was never totally happy with my slings and carriers, at least most of them had straps, buckles and other things indicating that they were official contraptions of the western people. She is not keen at all on the new wrap which is just a very long swathe of fabric that I tie around me and Snugglepunk. I've tried to show her a few times how he can't fall out but she is unconvinced. Given her lack of faith in the whole wrap thing, I probably should have waited until she was out of the house before trying to wrap Snugglepunk on my back for the first time. What started out as a calm and methodical exercise soon deteriorated into chaos. I lifted Snugglepunk onto my back and started to wrap the fabric around us, Ayi jumped up and started holding him up by the bum screaming "Wo haipa!” (I'm scared!) repeatedly until Snugglepunk was also screaming and I couldn't get the wrap wrapped around because Ayi was batting it away from the baby and wailing in my ear. She needed to sit down for 45 minutes after that incident with her head between her legs to recover. Occasionally she would look at me and shake her head mournfully. I think I'm breaking her soul.

1. I spend at least five minutes a day squeezing the water out of squeezy bath toys to stop them going moldy. This is time that I used to spend whisking away stray eyebrow hairs. Now I have a slight unibrow and the bath toys are still moldy.

2. I sleep on my side because to sleep on my back would mean partially sleeping on another human - probably the small star shaped one taking up my half of the bed.

3. I can't get out of the bed to pee at night because someone else's tiny bed is strapped to the side of my bed. It is worth noting that this person has never once slept in his bed.

4. It takes half an hour to complete what should be a ten minute walk from kindergarten to home. This is because we need to stop every twenty paces for a kiss and every ten to stroke dead leaves.

5. I used to nurse several glasses of wine over the course of an evening. I now spend my evenings nursing and whining.

6. I know which one is Tom and which one is Jerry. I also know that La-la is yellow, that there are ten Pontypines, the entire script of the Jungle Book, and the colour of every house in Balamory.

7. I haven't bathed alone since 2012.

8. Everything I cook can be eaten with just a fork.

9. Only the top half of our Christmas tree is decorated.

10. The only thing worse than running out of wine, is running out of raisins.

11. Almost every piece of clothing I own has lycra in it somewhere.

12. I say 'because I said so".

13. I keep a stash of lollipops in my bag for emergencies.

14. Some years I go to Christmas Mass more often than I go to the hairdresser.

15. I spend more money on shoes, but they’re smaller shoes, often with dinosaur motifs. I am convinced it would be less financially draining to develop a moderate to serious cocaine habit than trying to keep a toddler shod. I am going to buy shares in Clarkes.

16. The toilets have gotten smaller. Well, the toilets themselves haven't actually gotten smaller but the entrance to the toilet bowl has as we've affixed them all with tiny baby bum shaped tops to prevent Little A from falling into the toilet when he pees.

Phew…8 weeks down…only another 17.85 years to go (I am not open to criticism on the mathematical logic of that - there is no calculator handy). I have it nailed. Mr Oh is out at a work thing. It’s 8pm. Little A is asleep. I have my foot on Snugglepunk’s bouncer and am gently tapping him up and down which seems to be doing the trick. I’ve just finished a delicious four-cheese lasagne. Ok, so I ordered it on Sherpa’s (food delivery service) but you try ordering food online, breastfeeding and singing the Fireman Sam theme-tune simultaneously. I’m feeling very smug.

I have learned a lot from Baby A that I bring to the table with Baby B. The main rule is: never venture so far from home that you cannot walk back within ten minutes. This restricts my movement to a small area of Shanghai - from Xiangyang to Wukang on the horizontal axis and from Yan’an to Fuxing on the vertical. If you happen to be a fellow Shanghai resident who hangs round these parts in the afternoon, look out for me around 3.30 on Wuyuan. I’ve got blue and white striped Skechers, a screaming baby and can frequently be found shouting ‘W-T-F(in-full)’ at passing motorcyclists who mount the pavement and zoom around me.

Ayi and I are firm friends these days. Mostly because I’ve reduced her hours so no longer have to panic daily about how to create enough work for her to prevent that awkward feeling when your ayi sits silently in the corner with her hands in her lap looking into the middle distance. It doesn’t help that I’m married to the only man in the universe who cannot be prevented from cleaning the kitchen. I keep trying to tell him that all his tidying is leaving me with even less work to give Ayi but he gives me that slightly incredulous are-you-actually-giving-out-to-me-for-cleaning look. Despite her slightly odd habits, I’m very fond of her and she’s actually a great help. She also cleans like a demon and is crazy about babies. Most mothers don’t have home help like we do in Shanghai. I won’t when we go home. That frightens me slightly. How do people do it? I ask myself this a lot. I must be asking it out loud too because as another mother pointed out to me this week:1. Mothers in Europe do not have to test their children for lead poisoning (not sure how this relates to having an ayi);2. Mothers in Europe can have double strollers (I can barely wedge one pram through the ubiquitous bamboo scaffolding, shimmy over drains, bump up/down steps etc). I had to walk into the traffic with the pram no less than six times this afternoon because the pavement was blocked by random debris. 3. Mothers in Europe do not have to leave their babies at home when they run errands due to the fact that the air is toxic. I tried to put a particle filter mask on Snugglepunk today when we went outside but he wasn’t too keen so we had to go back indoors. The fact that I had to try to put a particle filter mask on an 8 week old makes me deeply unhappy. If there’s one thing I hate about Shanghai, it’s the air pollution. I hate it more than the spitting, and I really hate the spitting. 4. Mothers in Europe have parks and other places that they can bring their kids to run around and burn off energy. We have the driveway of our apartment building with cars driving in and out and a mosquito infested pond full of carnivorous turtles and floating fish carcasses.

Do I think Mothers in Europe have it easier than European Mothers in Shanghai? No. We definitely have it easier in many ways - being able to afford to pay someone to do your ironing is wonderful, access to affordable childcare is great (bearing in mind that it’s not necessarily the same standard of childcare that you would expect in Europe). We might have it easier, but we also have it scarier. Shanghai is, at times, a frightening place to raise children. Taxis don’t have seat belts (technically, they all have them but they’re often hidden under the seat), a green man does not mean you can cross the road without a car hurtling towards you, a pedestrian crossing means nothing, toys can be toxic, clothes can be flammable, food is - at best - an unknown quantity, the air is unhealthy bordering on dangerous…how does that all stack up against an ironing-free life? This isn’t a complaint, it’s just an observation. As my father would say, “The price…is the price.” (He said this in a conversation specifically relating to house-hunting but I think it has wider metaphysical appeal).

Back to Ayi. These days, we’re doing well. I’m no longer scared of asking her to do things. Yesterday, I asked her to peel and cut the vegetables for dinner. It was amazing - like I got all the fun (and kudos) of cooking without any of the real work. She also cleaned up after me. My new found comfort with Ayi has nothing to do with my own increased assertiveness and everything to do with breastfeeding. I mostly only give Ayi instructions when I’m breastfeeding - I feel like it gives me some kind of moral high ground - like my primal obligations supersede the need to peel a pumpkin. “Look at me, I’m nourishing the newly born…can you please iron these shirts?”

Ayi is also delighted with the new vibe. In the afternoon, when we all go outside to play in the driveway beside the fish pond/graveyard, I run around after Little A like a frazzled lunatic. Meanwhile, Ayi sits serenely on a bench holding court with the other ayis while Snugglepunk dozes lazily in her arms. She parades him around the apartment complex, batting away people who get too close to him and proudly detailing his many positive attributes i.e. his chubbiness, fulsome head of hair and pale complexion.

In her free time, she likes to berate me for being too soft on people (I presume she means people other than her). For example, the building maintenance man told me that he couldn’t fix a metal door stop that had snapped off. Ayi called him back up, barked at him for twenty seconds and within the space of a few hours, the impossible-to-fix doorstop was magically replaced. Thus followed a lecture from Ayi that went a little like this:Ayi: You must learn. You will never survive if you do not learn. Me: I think I’m surviving ok *looking unsure*Ayi: You must be firm. Me: Ok. Ayi: When someone says ‘I cannot’…you say ‘You will do as I demand’. Me: Ok. Ayi: You must be assertive. You must take control. Maybe you need to shout a little bit. Me: Isn’t that what I have you for? Ayi: Otherwise they will walk all over you. Me: Ok. Ayi: Now, I will take the baby and you will cook dinner. Me: Ok.

Historically, there has never been a single documented case of a woman remaining pregnant forever. All babies come out eventually and, four days after his expected due date, our second son was forcibly ejected from his water bath by the power of modern medicine (which is evidently not all that powerful because it took three days to coax him out).

I’m not going to go into the details of his birth - partly because birth stories make people uncomfortable and partly because I’ve forgotten.

Summary of my thoughts at various stages surrounding the birth of my second child:

Before labour: I would like a natural birth with bubbles and flower fairies and tiny cherubs singing in my head as I calmly guide my baby into the world. During labour: Oh my God - this is horrific. I am clearly going to die. Can someone get me a c-section? This is not physically possible. I am NEVER doing this again. Remember not to forget that later…if I survive…never again. Mr Oh…remind me…NEVER AGAIN! (Mr Oh didn’t hear me because he had quietly fainted in a far corner of the room). Seconds after birth of child: Holy Jesus - I’m not dead. I might be permanently incapacitated though. Doctor…am I ok? I don’t feel ok. Oh, look, baby. Nice baby. Minutes after birth of child: He’s lovely, and so soft. Don’t get distracted by the lovely baby. NEVER AGAIN. Day after birth of child: Never again. Never again. Never again. Never again. I can’t even sit up. Never again. Two days after birth of child: Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Three days after birth of child (when someone asks me how the labour went): It was just magical.

So, Snugglepunk is now three weeks old. We don’t leave the apartment too often with him. In China, newborns and their mothers spend the first month after birth in confinement - no leaving the home at all. Chinese old people also have no sense of personal space and/or boundaries so they get very, very close and very loudly vocalise their suspicions that your child might not yet be one month old and that you are therefore engaged in forbidden activity by exposing him to the outside world. I think if the old Chinese people of China had themselves a catchphrase, it would be “If it’s out in public, it’s public property”. In their defense, outside in China is no place for newborns - there’s bad air, toxic construction fumes, falling debris, illegal pavement traffic, bicycles with 20 ft long metal rods attached (perfect for skewering unsuspecting pedestrians) and Chinese grandmothers trying to poke your newborn in the face for unknown reasons.

Little A is reacting well to Snugglepunk’s arrival. We’ve been trying to teach him to be gentle with the new baby and he gets it as far as his hands and face are concerned i.e. lots of gentle kisses and hugs. His legs, however, he seems unwilling to take responsibility for and if he kneels on the baby while trying to gently kiss him or inadvertently kicks the baby while on his way to bestow gentle hugs, he cannot be held liable (at least, he refuses to be held liable). There’s no jealousy so far. The first thing Little A says every morning is “I want to see baby”. Baby has to be kissed at least a dozen times before Little A leaves for school. There seem to be bonus points for the amount of honey, yoghurt and other un-newborn friendly food Little A can transfer from his own face to the baby’s via these kisses. He seems to genuinely like the baby though and when Snugglepunk cries, Little A pats his back and says “No worries, baby”.

There’s still a little voice inside my head going ‘neveragainneveragainneveragainneveragain’ but it’s getting dimmer and harder to hear over the noise of two small screaming children.